The Benefits of Working in the Retail/Service Industry

I recently wrote an article to submit to Cracked.com and I'm having some trouble getting it published by them because it has no factual basis and isn't supported by any actual scientific studies.

I get that - I understand, and I'm not debating that with them because while there are several studies that show exactly how retail store layouts actively brainwash consumers from the second they walk through the door, there are no (or, at least, I have yet to find them) studies that scientifically show exactly how working in retail will make you a better person.  Apparently academia just doesn't give a shit about the actual people who do the job or what they gain from doing the job, science just wants to continue telling us all that major corporations are major douchebags and we're all doomed.

So, in my own little personal effort to combat negativity with humor and insight, here is the article:

6 Reasons Why Everybody Should Have to Work Retail at Some Point in Their Lives

(I know, I know, it's a long title -- shut up and read)

            Rather than spending money on self-improvement, did you know that there is a program out there right now that will improve nearly every aspect of your life and make you a better person…  that actually pays you?

            Granted, it’s minimum wage (plus spiffs/tips/commission), you'll be sexually harassed and verbally abused daily, you'll have no social life, and any romantic relationship will be strained at best, but by surviving and thriving through the hell-on-Earth that is the retail or service industry you’ll be a better person in nearly every aspect of your life.

            For example, did you know that by working retail…

6.     You’ll handle stress better.

            Retail is incredibly demanding.  You have to provide quality service to your customers, of course, but on top of that you have to receive, check-in, and put away freight; price or re-price large sections of the store; set up new displays and tear down old displays – and while you’re doing all of this you have to hit your sales goals for base-product and add-ons and service plans and in most places you have goals for convincing customers to sign up for a store credit card.

            Forget to do any one of these things and your job is in jeopardy.

            And rather than working in a state of perpetual fear, you have to plaster a friendly smile on your face and greet each customer like they’re your new favorite person in the world because a shitty attitude kills sales.

            In order to be successful (and stay sane) you develop a sense of perspective – you find yourself asking “If I don’t get these two feet of space priced properly, is anybody going to die?  Are they going to close the store?  Are they going to unleash the dickwolves upon me?  Am I really going to have to deal with anything other than a harsh talking-to from some jackass in a clip-on tie?”

            The answer to all of these questions, of course, is “no.” 

            And once you learn that the results aren’t all that dire, you relax and get to work (because it is your job, after all, and if you just fucked it off you would be fired).  And when customers come in you’re able to put down what you’re doing and help them, politely, with a friendly attitude, offer them everything under the sun, and when they’re out the door again you can get back to work until someone else interrupts you with a request for help.

            And those constant interruptions?  Those just mean…

           

5.     You’ll learn patience

            We all know someone who goes to bars and clubs and propositions pretty much everybody in the room, regardless of how many rejections they get.

            And when you ask them why they’re such outrageous douchebags, they always say the same thing:  “If only one in a hundred chicks will sleep with me, how am I ever going to find her if I don't ask a hundred chicks?”

            Chances are they learned that technique through working retail.

            While hooking up with customers for one-night-stands is fun, I'm actually talking about that "Keep trying until you succeed" attitude.  The one that prompts store managers to hang up posters of Michael Jordan saying "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" and repeatedly tell you that Babe Ruth struck out 60% of the time in between sessions of furrowing their brow and asking you bullshit questions like “Why didn’t you offer that person the service plan?  Why didn’t they buy two packs of batteries with their purchase?  Why didn’t they want to save money by signing up for a store credit card?”

            To get your manager to shut the hell up you take to offering everything to every customer…  And getting turned down upwards of fifty or sixty times in a row.

            But sometimes, someone comes in with the perfect attitude and money to burn that makes them the perfect customer. 

            This is the person you have been waiting for.

            If you’d given up out of frustration from rejection, you’d never have hit up this person who, amazingly, actually does want a store credit card and does have a bedside drawer full of "appliances" or "massagers" that need batteries and really could use that service plan because they stripped the gears on their last three "massagers" (or dropped them in the shower).

            Once you have a few tastes of success at work by sticking to it even after you’ve been maced, slapped, kicked in the junk, and rejected hundreds of times, you’ll carry that same perseverance and patience into your real life.

            It’s a the difference between fear of failure and fear of success; if the consequences of failure are negligible, why wouldn’t you take the chance?  At worst nothing happens, and at best you succeed.

            And of course, you’ll only succeed more when…

4.     You learn to communicate better

            Working in retail/service exposes you to the widest cross-section of humanity possible.  You’ll enjoy the company and patronage of both the smartest people on the planet (because even doctors and astrophysicists need to buy toilet paper) and the dumbest people imaginable (the ones who actually eat toilet paper).

            And you need to be able to communicate with every single one of them them, along with everybody in between, effectively and successfully.

            Working in retail teaches you the invaluable skill of being able to look at a person, and within five seconds of them opening their mouth you’re able to mimic their speech patterns, cadence, tone, and vocabulary in order to make a personal connection with them and convince them to buy stuff from you.

            Outside of work you’ll find yourself doing the same thing in your personal interactions with friends and family, and you’ll forge stronger connections with them because they suddenly think you really get them.  You listen better, and more, which helps you translate the half-truths people tell each other every day and you’ll find yourself not just talking, but actually communicating more truly and more deeply than before.

            You’ll make friends faster and more easily because that’s your job, and taking it outside of the store just makes the rest of your life easier.

            And when communication fails and everything goes to hell, you’ll still handle it well because in working retail…

3.     You’ll learn self-control

            If a child wandered into your house and pooped on your home entertainment system, you’d be perfectly within your rights to drop-kick them straight through your bay window.

            But in retail you get to watch the little-abortion-that-wasn’t ruin hundreds of dollars of merchandise and do nothing.

            Then you get to go clean it up for them.

            Outside of a retail/service environment this behavior would be considered ludicrous, but at work it’s par for the course.  You don’t get to do so much as throw a nasty look at people who literally come into your place of business and try to start a fight with you because they’re upset and want someone, anyone, to take it out on.

            Success in retail largely depends on your ability to remain patient and in control as you watch someone break something, then ask for a discount because it’s broken. 

            Finding proper, constructive outlets for your pent-up rage and frustration serves your everyday life in obvious ways; you’ll live longer and healthier by having reasonable responses stored up in your system for when something pushes you towards the edge of stabbing someone in the eye with a spork.  Where other people would break and go on a seven-state-killing-spree, you will simply take a deep breath, maybe have a 10 minute break to go smoke or watch cat videos and let the anger subside so you can get back to work.

            This level of self-control also means…

2.     You’ll be cleaner and more organized

             Working retail is a paradox – you have to keep everything neat, tidy and put away; lined up and priced properly at all times (this is called "fronting" and is named such because you have to literally pull merchandise to the front of the display); and customers are constantly digging through your clean and organized piles of merchandise hoping to find one with an incorrect price tag or a scuff mark on the packaging so they can rip you off.  Once they leave the store you get to work cleaning and organizing again, only to have the very next customer come in and let their hellspawn children pee on the home theatre display (I have actually seen this happen). 
             You don’t get to close down the store just to clean up, so you learn quick and easy ways to straighten up one little bit at a time so that over the course of the day you end up with a store that’s relatively as clean and neat and tidy as it was when you opened. 
               After doing it at work for long enough, you'll start doing it at home as well.
               Don’t like cleaning the bathroom?  Don’t.  Just take a minute between rounds of Call of Duty to go clean the toilet.  After a few more rounds, go run a magic-eraser sponge over the sink and counter.  When you rage-quit for the third time because some cocksucker is using a lag switch and you swear to gods that he’s following you from room to room just so he can stab you in the back and laugh at your corpse…take five minutes to regain your sanity and go wash the tub. 
               Any one of those activities takes maybe two to three minutes each to accomplish, but doing them all at once is a pain in the ass.  Doing them one at a time is so easy it hardly counts as “work,” and when you space it out like that it’s not a chore at all.  Soon you’ll find yourself handling all of your housework this way, taking care of all your chores just a little bit at a time and finding that you actually get far more done this way.

1.      You’ll be a better customer

            Like walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, you gain a whole new respect for the people on the other side of the counter (or on the other end of the phone) once you’ve been that person.

            Once you’ve had someone bitch at you about putting onions on their burger when they specifically said NO ONIONS, you find yourself that much more willing to forgive the waitress (and cook) who make a mistake with your order.

            After having a complete stranger call and yell at you because their kid downloaded a terabyte of porn then DEMAND you take the charge off of their cell-phone bill, you’re more willing to be patient with the customer service operator while they look up your account and figure out whether or  they’re allowed to credit your account when you have an issue.

            Nobody knows who started the bullshit rumor that you have to be an asshole to get what you want, but anybody who works retail will tell you in no uncertain terms that the worse you behave as a customer, the worse service you’re going to receive.  But if you’re nice?  If you’re polite and treat the employees with respect and courtesy?  You’ll get everything you want, and more, because they’ll be that much more willing to work with you.

            It’s like those scenes in movies when some big-spending, high-rolling regular customer walks into a store or restaurant and gets the red-carpet treatment.  It starts with the customer – if you're good to the employees, they’ll bend over backwards to give you anything and everything they can get away with.

            And who doesn’t want to be that guy?